Online Series: The Wheel of Time (Prime Video, Nov 22)
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I was rather underwhelmed for a season finale, although I was pretty tired when I watched it so I might need to watch it again.
hotcabbagesoup
why u guys want Celebrini, he played like a weenie
The main thing I don't like is that there is not one truly identifiable villain. I mean, who is the Dark One even and it looks like he's just been defeated by Randall. Why does he wear such business-like attire and we didn't even get the backstory for the Dark One this whole season. Padan Fain as villain? We didn't even get backstory for him either so how can we fear him, he's just a guy with some Fade cronies. The red Aes Sedai? Sure I guess, but not really villainous.
In Game of Thrones by end of the season 1 we can identify who we really hate and they keep adding villains later. But in this series, it feels like there's just nothing at stake.
In Game of Thrones by end of the season 1 we can identify who we really hate and they keep adding villains later. But in this series, it feels like there's just nothing at stake.
tacogeoff
Registered User
I had never heard of this book series before. I went in to the season 1 with no background or expectations. I enjoyed it even though i felt the series may have catered more towards the book readers who already know and are familiar with the world and ways of it. I have ordered the book series to read on my downtime as it sounds like we are going back to full lockdown.
An ok end to the season, I really hate that so many of these online series are only 6 to 8 episodes long. I mean I understand they aren't going to be 20 to 25 like TV sitcoms and dramas are historically but maybe 10 to 12 would be nice. Especially since with some of the, we have to wait so long between seasons.
TheAngryHank
Expert
- May 28, 2008
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Ultimately I thought it was. I don't know. Fine. I sort of stopped tracking when new episodes were releasing by the time the last two came out. There's filmmaking elements the show handles well. The characters aren't terrible or anything. But the whole thing really failed to make a lasting impact with me. I watched the finale two nights ago and only remembered to share my thoughts on it because someone liked an older post of mine in this thread.
I think it's hard for me to view this first season outside of the shallow similarities to Fellowship of the Ring or how it really failed to replicate what Fellowship did.
The show does a decent enough job exposplaining the magic of its world but not so much fleshing out that world or letting that magical world really have time to breath. That's the issue with having a plot involve a mad dash to try to defeat the Dark One as soon as possible, including that the Dark One and his history is not really all that fleshed out either.
I don't know. Not fleshed out well enough is the best way I can think to complain about it. It's missing something special. Even The Witcher, which is an undeniably imperfect and flawed fantasy adventure series has a more special and impactful foundation behind it.
I'll give this show another chance through a season 2 but it needs work. A lot of it.
I think it's hard for me to view this first season outside of the shallow similarities to Fellowship of the Ring or how it really failed to replicate what Fellowship did.
The show does a decent enough job exposplaining the magic of its world but not so much fleshing out that world or letting that magical world really have time to breath. That's the issue with having a plot involve a mad dash to try to defeat the Dark One as soon as possible, including that the Dark One and his history is not really all that fleshed out either.
I don't know. Not fleshed out well enough is the best way I can think to complain about it. It's missing something special. Even The Witcher, which is an undeniably imperfect and flawed fantasy adventure series has a more special and impactful foundation behind it.
I'll give this show another chance through a season 2 but it needs work. A lot of it.
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I think "fine" is a good description of how I felt about it too. It wasn't terrible, but wasn't something I couldn't wait to watch either. I think Pike kills it as Moiraine, but the rest of the cast is kind of hit or miss. The production level felt like a step above a SyFy or CW show, but a step below something better. I'll give it another season to pick it up a bit, but if they don't I don't see this show lasting long.
Yeah, I was kind of surprised they couldn't create a more convincing overall "look" or feel for the show. It falls short of the GoT standard for sure. There's a surprising amount of strange editing choices and the directing doesn't seem to add anything extra to the story. There are just too few few scenes where you thought "damn that was great tv". It kind of feels like a mixture of high budget production and something you would have expected from fantasy before LOTR and GoT came out. The story of the first season itself is very similar to LOTR but I don't think it got close to capturing the same epicness as Jackson's LOTR.
Strange that my biggest fear of how channeling will work on screen has actually been quite fine. It's all the rest that has been just very average.
Strange that my biggest fear of how channeling will work on screen has actually been quite fine. It's all the rest that has been just very average.
I finished it earlier today or yesterday. The ending fell flat for me. I remember reading an article trying to pump it up and I get there was a battle but flipping between the battle and the dragon vs the dark one was too jarring for me. It worked in LOTR when flipping between Helms Deep and the Ents so I can't really give you a great explanation. It just felt off.
As for the dragon - they telegraphed who the dragon was going to be pretty early on eliminating the two other guys and then it became a question of whether it was Rand or Egwene. Rand with his reluctance seemed to fit the more typical 'reluctant hero embracing his destiny'.
I think the show was okay and I'll watch another season if/when it comes out but that was an underwhelming end.
Lord of the Rings is the best comparison but there are some reasons I don't think Wheel of Time worked out well and most of it surrounds the trouble they have making a compelling journey for the characters like Lord of the Rings did.
An example would be The Gap vs Helms Deep. Helms Deep - the king of Rohan and everyone in it is desperate and they fled to Helms Deep to hold out compared to The Gap where the rulers seem arrogant about it. The fight in Helms Deep is 20 minutes of the movie after a long build up including fights on the way to Helms Deep. The fight for The Gap is ~15 minutes roughly from the marching to the witches (whatever they're called) essentially killing themselves to kill the army. The juxtaposition of sympathy build up for Rohan vs. the arrogance of the caretakers of The Gap. You saw several main characters in trouble at Helms Deep throughout the fight. Risking life and limb for Rohan. They're 'saved' by the return of the Rohirim or whatever they're called but still decimated. Compare that to two of the lead women showing up at the last second with this incredibly powerful magic to save the situation. And if they had all this power why wasn't this plan A? Sacrifice 5 to save the wall and destroy tens of thousands?
Another example would be the fellowship breaking up in movie 1 vs the breakup we see early on for Wheel of Time. The journey mattered to the characters in LOTR and they were on board. Wheel of Time was more like a bunch of teenagers on a road trip with parents where half don't even want to be there. It made the split more of a "meh". Also Boromir died in LOTR, a main character died for that split to happen. The audience understands sacrifice, fellowship, loss, the difficulty of the journey is reinforced.
I'll definitely watch season 2 when it comes out and I love Rosamund Pike but the show reminded me too much of a cheap copy of Lord of the Rings.
As for the dragon - they telegraphed who the dragon was going to be pretty early on eliminating the two other guys and then it became a question of whether it was Rand or Egwene. Rand with his reluctance seemed to fit the more typical 'reluctant hero embracing his destiny'.
I think the show was okay and I'll watch another season if/when it comes out but that was an underwhelming end.
Lord of the Rings is the best comparison but there are some reasons I don't think Wheel of Time worked out well and most of it surrounds the trouble they have making a compelling journey for the characters like Lord of the Rings did.
An example would be The Gap vs Helms Deep. Helms Deep - the king of Rohan and everyone in it is desperate and they fled to Helms Deep to hold out compared to The Gap where the rulers seem arrogant about it. The fight in Helms Deep is 20 minutes of the movie after a long build up including fights on the way to Helms Deep. The fight for The Gap is ~15 minutes roughly from the marching to the witches (whatever they're called) essentially killing themselves to kill the army. The juxtaposition of sympathy build up for Rohan vs. the arrogance of the caretakers of The Gap. You saw several main characters in trouble at Helms Deep throughout the fight. Risking life and limb for Rohan. They're 'saved' by the return of the Rohirim or whatever they're called but still decimated. Compare that to two of the lead women showing up at the last second with this incredibly powerful magic to save the situation. And if they had all this power why wasn't this plan A? Sacrifice 5 to save the wall and destroy tens of thousands?
Another example would be the fellowship breaking up in movie 1 vs the breakup we see early on for Wheel of Time. The journey mattered to the characters in LOTR and they were on board. Wheel of Time was more like a bunch of teenagers on a road trip with parents where half don't even want to be there. It made the split more of a "meh". Also Boromir died in LOTR, a main character died for that split to happen. The audience understands sacrifice, fellowship, loss, the difficulty of the journey is reinforced.
I'll definitely watch season 2 when it comes out and I love Rosamund Pike but the show reminded me too much of a cheap copy of Lord of the Rings.
Osprey
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- Feb 18, 2005
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I finally watched Episode 7 and found it rather dumb. The opening was amusing in its absurdity, but I doubt very much that that was the writers' intent. Next, the main characters argued over what to do when they had no choice and had to travel for a day in the very dangerous Ways without channeling because it would alert Machin Shin... even though they channeled to enter the Ways (which should've alerted it) and eventually channeled to escape. When it eventually showed up, it turned out to be little more than a psychologist telling them things about themselves that they didn't want to hear. Upon escaping it and exiting, they were only a day's walk from the Eye of the World, which begs the question of why they camped and slept in such a dangerous place when they had to have been less than an hour (if not minutes) away (in Ways time) from the point where they needed to exit or even why they didn't just exit and camp for the night in the safer, normal world, instead. Then, there was so much soap opera-like melodrama and building up to a reveal that I guessed in the first episode and was rather obvious midway through the season. I really wonder if the writers thought that they were fooling anyone by pretending so much that it could've been any of the other characters. It might be the most predictable and anti-climactic reveal that I've ever seen.
I started out sort of liking the show and giving it a chance, but I've soured on it as it's gone on. There's only an episode left and I still don't care about any of the characters or the story. The stakes amount to "remember that Trolloc massacre way back in the first episode and imagine a lot more of that" and the ultimate villain is so vaguely described that pretty much all that we know of him is that he's called the Dark One. As such, I have a lot less anticipation for the final episode than I'd expect.
I started out sort of liking the show and giving it a chance, but I've soured on it as it's gone on. There's only an episode left and I still don't care about any of the characters or the story. The stakes amount to "remember that Trolloc massacre way back in the first episode and imagine a lot more of that" and the ultimate villain is so vaguely described that pretty much all that we know of him is that he's called the Dark One. As such, I have a lot less anticipation for the final episode than I'd expect.
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This is a really good point. When you have a single book that closely emulates the LotR trilogy (good side by side review comparison here), and then take that book and condense it even more into an 8 hour TV season, then yeah it's going to start looking like a shoddy knock off if you're viewing it in comparison to LotR.
You get a good example from Shadar Logoth/The Ways/The Blight. If they adapted book to TV 1:1 they'd be in Shadar Logoth probably a whole episode and maybe half in the ways, and another half+ in the blight. On TV though they have a lot to cover so just plow through these sections in 10-15 minutes.
Like I've been saying it's really going to come down to the second season to get a better grasp of the show. The easiest way I can explain book/season 1 in LotR terms is this is basically Sauron attempting to Zerg rush the good guys, take out Frodo before he even gets through the Mines of Moria. win the war before anyone's even ready. Now that the rush is blocked you move onto the light/dark building up for a more proper high stakes conflict.
hotcabbagesoup
why u guys want Celebrini, he played like a weenie
There just seems to be more depth in the plot with LOTR. Before we see Sauron zerg rushing the Hobbits in the Shire, we get Gollum's backstory and then we see Sauron's spy network catching and torturing Gollum and getting him to reveal the location of the Ring ("Shire!! Bagginses!!"). Then Sauron's very own agents of destruction the Nazgul are sent out and show up in Bree (the Zerg rush) and we are slowly introduced to other players such as Aragorn. And even then, there are four hobbits on the run and Sauron can never really track them (not until much later when Pippin looks into the Palantir...and then Aragorn picks it up afterwards and Sauron believes Aragorn has the Ring). In Wheel of Time, how does the Dark One know the Dragon is going to show up at the Eye like this. I'm not getting the same amount of depth and I think the condensation has really weakened the series.
Well yeah The Wheel of Time is a 15 book series where the opening book mimics the LOTR, it's just starting the story and there's far more depth to come. It remains to be seen if the show can pull it off but the one area Jordan really excels in is world building. Kind of the problem with the book series dragging on is there can be too much depth, as all the characters eventually break off into their own storylines. For example in LotR lore Nazgul were ancient kings but otherwise lack any character (except the one), while the 12 or so WoT equivalents (not the faceless black cloak guys) do maintain their identities and are all fleshed out villains. That adds a lot to the page count.
Osprey
Registered User
- Feb 18, 2005
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I just finished the finale and found it pretty underwhelming.
Technically, the episode also appeared worse to me than previous episodes, especially the CGI, which was pretty bad, as though they ran out of time or something. Finally (no pun), it didn't feel much like a finale, and that's even keeping in mind that it's just the start of the story.
Overall, I'd say that the series was watchable, but disappointing. I haven't read the books (and if I had, I might be even more disappointed), but it fell quite short of the level of GoT or LotR and was more like The Witcher as big budget epic fantasy series go, which is fine, but it also seemed to try so hard to be the next GoT or LotR (unlike The Witcher). Besides being derivative and, as I've said before, having uninteresting characters and feeling predictable, it felt very rushed and relied too much on exposition. It has a lot of world building to do, but does it mostly through dialogue, which makes it less interesting and harder to process. I frequently had to jump back 10 seconds and turn on subtitles to make sure that I didn't miss a bit of speech that I might need to know to understand what's going on. Successfully adapting such a dense book to under 10 hours of run time is no doubt difficult, but LotR proved that it's possible (without relying on too much exposition). Even just 10 episodes instead of 8 might've made a difference, though, if the extra 2 hours were used to show more rather than just tell more.
Despite all of those issues, the series was decent enough that I'll watch Season 2, but it's not something that I'll be looking forward to and I hope that it's better across the board. I think that it has potential, but it didn't get close to it in this season, IMO.
The Eye of World, which sounded like an epic location, turned out to be an abandoned hole in the ground and the Dark One was just an unintimidating, well-groomed man who employed the familiar trope of trying in vain to turn the hero to the dark side. Nothing was surprising, certainly not that the hero rejected his offer or even the two main characters "dying," because you knew that they weren't going to die, at least not yet.
Overall, I'd say that the series was watchable, but disappointing. I haven't read the books (and if I had, I might be even more disappointed), but it fell quite short of the level of GoT or LotR and was more like The Witcher as big budget epic fantasy series go, which is fine, but it also seemed to try so hard to be the next GoT or LotR (unlike The Witcher). Besides being derivative and, as I've said before, having uninteresting characters and feeling predictable, it felt very rushed and relied too much on exposition. It has a lot of world building to do, but does it mostly through dialogue, which makes it less interesting and harder to process. I frequently had to jump back 10 seconds and turn on subtitles to make sure that I didn't miss a bit of speech that I might need to know to understand what's going on. Successfully adapting such a dense book to under 10 hours of run time is no doubt difficult, but LotR proved that it's possible (without relying on too much exposition). Even just 10 episodes instead of 8 might've made a difference, though, if the extra 2 hours were used to show more rather than just tell more.
Despite all of those issues, the series was decent enough that I'll watch Season 2, but it's not something that I'll be looking forward to and I hope that it's better across the board. I think that it has potential, but it didn't get close to it in this season, IMO.
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Azathoth
Registered User
As a non-book reader I was a little disappointed in the season finale. The battle between the dragon and the dark one seemed a bit anti-climatic and cliched. And one thing that kind of bugged me was
I'll watch season 2 but if its as rushed as season 1 I'm not too hopeful. A 10 episode season would certainly help.
that in the beginning of the season we saw Morraine, a fully trained and powerfull Aes sedai struggle to take out the trollocs that were attacking the town, but now we have a few untrained channelers coming together to take out an entire army of like 15000 trollocs? Seems inconsistent and I think the books handle it better with Rand going nuclear on the army.
So you’re a non book reader.
one thing I’ll say is that it highlights the power disparity between moiraine and egwene + Nynaeve.
Nynaeve is incredibly strong, but egwene also dwarfs moiraine, she’s just not as strong as nynaeve.
Osprey
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- Feb 18, 2005
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Perhaps it's consistent with what comes later (i.e. how powerful the two characters will become), but his point is that it doesn't feel consistent with what came before. It's like if you made Harry Potter and friends really powerful at the end of the first movie, not long after showing them struggling to perform even the simplest magic tricks, just because they would eventually be that powerful in the later books. In the WoT finale, the two characters are still untrained and unpracticed, yet repulsed 15,000 Trollocs with the help of a character that we hadn't seen (much less seen channel) before the episode. It seemed very unearned and like the writers just wanted the final battle to be won by women instead of a man, which may also be the reason for the lame confrontation with the Dark One, since Rand needed something to do after having his big, heroic moment from the book taken from him. I have to wonder if the writers are really interested in adapting the book series or reinventing the 'Wheel'.
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Tawnos
A guy with a bass
The show did tell us that Nynaeve is
the most powerful channeller brought to the tower in 1000 years, and showed us much stronger flows coming off the two of them than the others there, as well as them lasting longer. But yeah, they could've done a better job making it clear that Egwene's and Nynaeve's power overwhelmed Amalisa there.
I thought the graphics kinda do that for us. Watch the streams of power and compare them to amalisa.
Egwene has something like 4-5 streams and nynaeve 6-7 or so.
Moiraine I think maxes out at 2 I believe.
Tawnos
A guy with a bass
Yeah, that's what I was referring to with flows. It might have been more subtle than they really needed to get the point across though.
This is a point where the show didn't make it clear what's happening to new comers. When Aes Sedai 'link up' what they're doing is giving control of their power to be wielded by the lead woman. So here Egwene and Nynaeve are nothing but batteries, with the weaker but trained woman directing what the power does.
But yes overall the 'battle' part was a disappointment, but I think that's pretty much a theme in book to TV adaptions. As far as I'm concerned Game of Thrones didn't handle it well, The Witcher didn't handle it well, and neither did Wheel of Time.
Osprey
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- Feb 18, 2005
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What I don't understand is...
...how Nynaeve was overwhelmed, seemingly died and needed Egwene to heal her if she's the most powerful channeler in 1000 years and more powerful than Egwene.
Also, on an unrelated note, I don't understand what the whole point of the season was. I thought that it was to get the Dragon Reborn to the Eye to defeat the Trolloc army, which appears to be what happens in the book. In the show, however...
...neither the Dragon Reborn nor the Eye was necessary because five channelers (none of whom were the Dragon Reborn) were able to defeat the army on their own. They didn't even need to go to the Eye to get the Horn, since Perrin found it in Fal Dara, instead. In fact, it might've been better if Rand hadn't even gone to the Eye because doing so ended up breaking the seal. Both the Dragon Reborn and the Eye end up looking like MacGuffins, whereas they weren't in the book.
I think that the show actually did make that pretty clear because I got that. Even without directing the power, though, Nynaeve and Egwene were still able to summon that immense amount of it, which is the part that's hard to believe, based on what we'd seen before.
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67 others
Registered User
Book 1, 2 and 3 are good. 4, 5, 6 and 7 amazing. 8 was meh rushed. 9 was amazing with a huge ending. 10 was , sad to say ,skippable filler. More happens in the first 50 pages of book 11 than all of 10 combined.
11 was good.
Then the new author took over. 12 and 13 were amazing and 14 was everything I wanted in a final book and then some
Warden of the North
Ned Stark's head
It ended better then it started, however pretty clear they were hamstrung by budgetary concerns for the finale. Similar to Game of Thrones early seasons where they couldn't show really huge battles in detail.
As an aside I'm going to try and read the books. I attempted about 20 years ago and didn't make it more then a couple hundred pages in. I recall thinking the author was more exhausting at detailing mundane things then even Tolkien was
As an aside I'm going to try and read the books. I attempted about 20 years ago and didn't make it more then a couple hundred pages in. I recall thinking the author was more exhausting at detailing mundane things then even Tolkien was
